Final Days of Service
by wsdsrdbw4096
Summary: AU possible future. During his final week of service with the constabulary, George Crabtree is drawn into a murder case that quickly becomes personal for him. Please read and review! To be re-written. Formerly titled Last Day of Service.


**Author's note: This idea has been cooking in my mind for a while. **

**I don't own _Murdoch Mysteries_.**

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Chapter 1: Memories

_August 27, 1927_

George Crabtree sat in his office alone, staring at the window.

He watched the citizens of Toronto walking down the streets, with cars and a few horse-drawn carts roaming the streets as usual, with maybe seven or eight streetcars passing by.

It is hard to believe how fast time went by. It felt like as if yesterday he was only a young police constable helping his superior solving a murder and then the next day he is sitting in his office going through important reports and signing some orders.

He had just returned from his meeting with the mayor and is now enjoying the view of the city from his office.

He then turned back to his desk and decided to carry on clearing out his office.

Several of his belongings, including a few books and original copies of his novels were already in boxes, ready to be picked up by the constables assigned to help him clear out of his office.

Today is his last day of service with the Toronto Constabulary.

Towards the mid-afternoon, George was clearing out the last drawer when he pulled out an old photograph.

It was that of a mouse staring at the camera while a man is seen looking into a file cabinet just by the edge of the photograph.

At first, he couldn't remember how or when was the photograph taken or why had he even kept it in the first place, but then his mind clicked as he realized the circumstances surrounding the photograph.

The photograph was taken from a scrutiny camera he and a colleague of his installed in his old station house to catch the culprit of the break-in of the station house back then.

He remembered his old inspector's initial comments when he looked at the photograph.

"_A mouse. A bloody mouse!_"

George chuckled at the memory and remembered that the break-in occurred back in 1898, four years after he was sworn in as a constable.

He then remembered that the scrutiny camera was an invention of a detective superior whom he had worked with, along with the inspector, for many years before his promotion to detective in 1902.

Gently placing the photograph into one of the boxes, he then looked into the drawer and pulled out another photograph.

This time, the photo was that of a gathering of constables, along with two men in suits and the chief constable back then.

The photo was accommodated with a description saying, "Station House No. 4, Toronto Constabulary, 1900"

George looked at the photo and quickly located a young, handsome lad he recognized as himself, 27 years younger.

He looked really proud in the photo and like all of the lads, he was carrying his custodian helmet.

He then turned and looked at his tunic and compared it with the constables tunic he has been wearing in the photo. It has medal ribbons and some pins on it, with a crown and two pips on his shoulders, different than having nothing on his old constables tunic at all. He also spotted the peaked cap he has on his desk and compared it with the custodian helmet he wore 27 years ago.

"Time sure went by fast." He thought.

Focusing back on the photo, he immediately spotted his friend and colleague, Constable Henry Higgins, smiling beside him.

Higgins has been an old friend of his for a while. They will often patrol together and assist the detective together.

He also remembered the time when he figured out that Higgins was helping their inspector skip his dental appointment during the investigation of a competitive inventor. He will never forget the moment he managed to convince Higgins to go arrest the suspect and then inform the inspector (Keeping him seated in the dentist's chair in the process) of the developments on the case, and then leave the dental clinic as he heard his inspector yelling in pain.

Speaking of their inspector, George looked at the photo and immediately spotted Inspector Thomas Brackenreid.

Brackenreid was quite strict on the lads. As a no-nonsense inspector, he will often regard his theories on ghosts and other supernatural phenomenon as rubbish and bullocks - That is, being skeptical on his theories on vampires, ghosts and zombies.

The only time where their roles were reversed was during a murder at the beach on a hot summer day, where the inspector was convinced that he had saw a lake monster in the lake but George was completely skeptical of it.

While Brackenreid may be strict on him, he is also known to be caring at times.

The best example of that was 28 years ago when he and Henry were injured in an explosion that was thought to be the doing of an anarchist organization, where the inspector had made sure that he and Higgins get to the hospital as soon as possible. He even thought that he (George) should take a few days off when he returned to work the next day.

It was also during that event that his now-wife took an interest in him.

Doctor Emily Grace was brought in to work in the city's morgue during the time when the detective he had worked with was suspended for interfering with the investigation of a murder at an Alice In Wonderland-themed party.

She showed an interest in him in the aftermath of the explosion and as it turned out, they have something in common in the form of believing in supernatural phenomenon.

That common interest reminded him of their stay at Queen's Park one night to capture one of the ghosts that haunted the place, a stay that was cut short with the death of another politician.

Their relationship did had some low points, in particularly after the death of another colleague's first husband, where that man's younger brother charmed Emily and lead him to break up with her after witnessing her kissing him during a sting to stop one of his detective mentor's enemies.

He later courted an old love interest who's husband was killed in the Boer War and had came close to being engaged to her. However, the husband turned out to be alive and have returned, leading him to annual their engagement.

Meanwhile, Emily had broke up with the man after it turned out that he was behind the threatening notes her colleagues had received. She tried to win him (George) back to no success initially, and for a while she courted a fellow woman's suffragist, only for their relationship to be rocky.

He and Emily eventually found each other after his promotion to detective, and they were engaged and married in the following year.

George smiled at the memories he had with Emily before looking at the photograph once again.

He had spotted Detective William Murdoch in the photograph, standing beside Inspector Brackenreid.

Murdoch was not only a superior to him. He was also a friend and mentor.

During his first eight years on the force, Murdoch has been mentoring him on detecting and crime-fighting techniques.

It was through Murdoch's mentoring that allowed him to crack some cases on his own. The murder of a man during the time when Murdoch was suspended was one of the first cases he managed to solve without Murdoch's help, along with the break-in at Station House No. 4 the year before.

He also remembered serving as Murdoch's best man during his wedding to Doctor Julia Ogden, where he had lost the wedding rings, only for his friend Henry to find them in time.

As George smiled at the memories, a knock on his office door brought him back to reality.

"Yes?" George asked as he placed the photograph into the box.

"Chief Constable Crabtree, the change-in-command ceremony is taking place at Station House Four in about fifteen minutes, sir." The constable at the door said.

"Oh, yes, that's right. Goodness me, I must have forgotten about it." George replied as he stood up, took his peaked cap and made his way to the door.

On his way out, he instructed the desk inspector at his office. "I'm pretty much done packing my belongings, Frank. Make sure the constables finished moving my trunk and other belongings onto the moving truck by the time I return from the ceremony."

"Yes, sir." The inspector replied.

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